Air­bus cuts 1100 jobs in France and Germany

AIR­BUS is cut­ting more than 1100 jobs in Europe and clos­ing one of its sites near Paris as part of an on­go­ing re­struc­tur­ing pro­gram.

A to­tal of 640 jobs will be lost in France, mostly af­fect­ing op­er­a­tions in Suresnes, near Paris, where a re­search fa­cil­ity will close.

Another 429 jobs will go at Ger­man sites in Ham­burg, Bre­men, Ulm and Ot­to­brunn, near Mu­nich.

“Air­bus Group en­vis­ages a pro­gres­sive re­duc­tion of its cur­rent work­force of around 136,000 by a max­i­mum of 1164 po­si­tions,” it said.

Unions ac­cuse Air­bus of fol­low­ing “fi­nan­cial logic” in cut­ting jobs at a time when its or­der book is worth nearly 1 tril­lion eu­ros (US$1.05 tril­lion), equiv­a­lent to eight to 10 years of pro­duc­tion.

Air­bus how­ever is run­ning into head­winds, prompt­ing the search for cost-cut­ting op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Its he­li­copter di­vi­sion has suf­fered from a weak mar­ket, the com­pany has had to set aside nearly two bil­lion eu­ros of pro­vi­sions to cover the cost of its mil­i­tary A400M model, and its A380 flag­ship has been slow to take off com­mer­cially.

Its re­struc­tur­ing project, called Gem­ini, aims to merge the com­pany’s com­mer­cial air­craft di­vi­sion into a new en­tity, Air­bus Group, by the sum­mer of 2017. –